REC-RL: Referring expression counting via Gaussian and range-based reward optimization

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Liu, Hui, Teng, Yunlai, Bai, Kunlong, Qi, Pengfei, Yan, Haotian, Li, Liang, Feng, Junlan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866913133872807936
author Liu, Hui
Teng, Yunlai
Bai, Kunlong
Qi, Pengfei
Yan, Haotian
Li, Liang
Feng, Junlan
author_facet Liu, Hui
Teng, Yunlai
Bai, Kunlong
Qi, Pengfei
Yan, Haotian
Li, Liang
Feng, Junlan
contents Referring expression counting (REC) is an intention-driven task that requires context-aware visual reasoning. While recent vision-language models incorporate language for visual understanding, most existing REC methods rely on rulebased reinforcement learning with rewards focused primarily on final accuracy, overlooking the quality of intermediate reasoning. We propose REC-RL, a reinforcement learning framework that introduces a think-range-answer paradigm to explicitly optimize the visual reasoning process. RECRL employs Group Relative Policy Optimization and two lightweight rewards: an accuracy reward that combines range-based interval supervision with Gaussian-based precision guidance, and a format reward that enforces structured outputs. By modeling intermediate focus prediction as internal decision-making, REC-RL avoids additional annotations and better aligns with human perception. Extensive experiments demonstrate consistent improvements over strong baselines and robust generalization across benchmarks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_16460
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle REC-RL: Referring expression counting via Gaussian and range-based reward optimization
Liu, Hui
Teng, Yunlai
Bai, Kunlong
Qi, Pengfei
Yan, Haotian
Li, Liang
Feng, Junlan
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Referring expression counting (REC) is an intention-driven task that requires context-aware visual reasoning. While recent vision-language models incorporate language for visual understanding, most existing REC methods rely on rulebased reinforcement learning with rewards focused primarily on final accuracy, overlooking the quality of intermediate reasoning. We propose REC-RL, a reinforcement learning framework that introduces a think-range-answer paradigm to explicitly optimize the visual reasoning process. RECRL employs Group Relative Policy Optimization and two lightweight rewards: an accuracy reward that combines range-based interval supervision with Gaussian-based precision guidance, and a format reward that enforces structured outputs. By modeling intermediate focus prediction as internal decision-making, REC-RL avoids additional annotations and better aligns with human perception. Extensive experiments demonstrate consistent improvements over strong baselines and robust generalization across benchmarks.
title REC-RL: Referring expression counting via Gaussian and range-based reward optimization
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16460